water softener on steam boiler water feed?!?

Spide

i just heard one of our local schools is having a water softener installed in the feed water to their steam boiler on president's day. hmmmmm....

the city water here has very high "total dissolved solids", which is why i only drink beer. :)

what do you think soft water will do in a steam system?

George_10

It will work fine

as long as they constantly check the out put of the softner.
If it is poorly maintained, they will loose the benefit of soft water and could get into other problems.

Fred Harwood

soft water

More likely, the hard water has been clogging up the boiler, any HX tubing, and humidity control devices. My most recent hard water experience was the complete calcification of a 007 circulator. The shaft pin hole that lets water cool the motor limed up, then the whole pump solidified as hard water drifted through the impeller casing for a few months before anyone noticed.
And a steamer that often needs water added will fill itself with limestone pretty quickly.

Tony Conner

In A...

...steam system that is a straight heating application, essentially all of the condensate should be returned to the boiler. Other than the initial shot of hardness from the fill water, there really shouldn't be much make-up water to soften. The same water just keeps leaving the boiler as steam, and returning as condensate. Any scale from hardness will stay in the boiler, and the little bit of scale laid down by the initial fill water will be too small to measure. If the boiler is making dry steam, the condensate is inherently soft water, even when a boiler is being fed with hard water.